Afterward for Contours of Class in Early Republic:

How the development of capitalism and class distinctions lay the groundwork for Abolitionism

By Kristina Kelleher

In seminar on Monday we discussed the historiography questions raised in this week’s readings extensively. Therefore, I am going to focus my afterward on how the articles read and discussed this week can enhance our understanding of the development of capitalism and class during the early 19th century in American history. (To do this in the space constraints here, I will focus my analysis on the articles by Gienapp and Bushman.) I hope in doing this I will help us begin to think about how these developments lay the groundwork for the rise of abolitionism, our topic of discussion for next week’s seminar.

First, if we look to Gienapp’s article on Seller’s class based history of Jacksonian America, we can see that Gienapp makes a strong argument for how widely “capitalists attitudes were diffused in American society” (page 246) during this time period and were becoming more so. Gienapp argues that part of how the market system was able to triumph so quickly in comparison say to Britain was because there was “Probably no country were capitalist attitudes more firmly entrenched or widely distributed throughout the population before industrialization began than in the United States.” (page 248) As we discussed in class and Gienapp discusses on page 247, “resistance to the market and its values was generally weak” in Jacksonian America.” Gienapp points to much evidence of this widespread acceptance of the capitalist market driven mentalities throughout this period including, on page 247, the wide distribution of clocks. (For more on how capitalist notions of time even took root on Southern slave plantations during this time see Mastered By the Clock, Mark M. Smith) The entrenchment of these capitalist mentalities changed society drastically, particularly in the area of class development.

Gienapp’s article also brings our discussion back to evangelilcialism seen last week in Southern Cross, and in particular, Gienapp argues that the spread of evangelicialism “strengthened capitalist values among workers and farmers.” (pages 245-7) It is even a story of a Methodist minister, Peter Cartwright, on page 246, that Gienapp uses to bring out the development of the idea of “Domestic Respectability” during this time period. Particularly this idea focuses on the time’s movement towards gendering of American labor responsibilities that are tied so closely to the division occurring between the workplace and home (which Bushman discusses.) American women are painted of being particularly guilty of “indulging in this emphasis on fashion and status through consumption and appearance” (page 248) that the capitalist market system brings and that the development of the idea of respectability requires.

The development of the idea of “respectability” and its connection to the Gentility development is further discussed Bushman’s chapter on Culture and Power. The idea of “respectability” became necessary during this time of rapid growth in capitalism and therefore for global trading market economy based on trust and quick assessments of possible business partners. Bushman ties this development to the destruction of traditional communities at the time, when “people were cast adrift, status and identity lost” (page 404) (this search for belonging reminds me of how Hellenistic religions of salvation became popular in the Roman Empire.) And further explains the development of the necessity for a way to judge one’s “respectability” by stating that this is when: “established hierarchies dissolved, and strange faces replaced familiar ones. Strangers had no preconceived idea of each other’s places in the word, especially in the flux of the city. They could only judge by appearances and manners.” (page 404)

Another interesting issue we discussed but did not take as far as we could have in class from Bushman’s article is how this culture of gentility is transmitted and how it interacts with the “American democratic instinct.” In Bushman’s article we see many descriptions of how it is transmitted through culture, particularly written culture such as Griswold, in a top down fashion though less is discussed if there is something to discuss about cultural movement from the down upwards socially. I think it would be worthwhile to consider how Bushman’s and our own thoughts on that topic connect to Johnson’s ideas on Agency and how perhaps giving agency to groups that truly lack power is hurtful because it fails to appropriately respect and communicate the nature of the power dynamics at the time. What’s also often lacking from discussions around the development of this idea of respectability for the upper and middle classes (which Bushman actually does address) is how “by fixing standards of polite conduct for the elite, gentility marked humble people just as distinctly, with their contrasting disheveled clothes, rough houses and coarse manners.” (Page 420) In addition, how the creation of a middle and upper class that could occasionally claim to share some aspects of culture of the gentility ideal also redefine lower social classes. In light of our discussion next week, I think it would be particularly pertinent to look at how this develops alongside the shift during this time where the spectrum of positions of social coercion and “un-freedom” become fewer with clearer distinctions, such as between “free” and “slave” labor.

The Concept of Class in Early America and its Historiography

Since we are a seminar that is directly addressing the "problem of class," perhaps it is most valuable to begin our discussion with Gienapp's assertion that class divisions in early America are a "myth" produced by the New Left and the "Politically Correct" academy. Gienapp writes through a critique of a particular class based historical analysis, Sellers' work on Jacksonian Politics, but he also implies a wider attack on the use of "class" in the study of history. Because much of Gienapp's work is directly concerned with Sellers, so we must infer how he objects to class based history in general. I propose that we begin by discussing Gienapp's critique so that we can situate our discussion of the other pieces in the historiography.

But in order to understand Gienapp, we might start by looking at his own historical situation. Gienapp spends a lot of time labeling Sellers as an historian "firmly rooted" in the academic climate of the 1960's. He contends that Sellers is part of a mislead "counterculture" and that he produces a "polemical and at times bizarre interpretation of Jacksonian America." (233) But while Gienapp is quick to dismiss Sellers 1991 work as a callback to a confused 1960's, he does not recognize that he is also writing in a deeply polemic time. Across academic disciplines, the end of the Cold War was taken as an intellectual victory for American Liberalism and the market system. Gienapp is correct then when he states that Sellers' work is out of place in 1991, but he takes the current political climate as reason to dismiss class as a means of analysis. As we have discussed in class, the impact of this intellectual climate on social history was to minimize class and elevate 'multicultural' categories like race, gender and ethnicity. This is important for us to recognize because contrary to his claims, Gienapp is himself taking the easy political road.

What is more, Gienapp's piece is written for a policy journal. Although this might seem irrelevant to the subject matter, I think that the study of "policy" requires an implicit endorsement of the American political system: if one wishes only to optimize political policy, then it is necessary to believe that the American political system is, at the very least, fixable. In fact, many places in the text, Gienapp suggests that class history is not compatible with the study of American Democracy (See his discussion on page 251). I think that this kind of analysis is confined by the very paradoxical promises made by the American system that we have hitherto studied in early American History.

If we wish to identify the impact of class on American history, then it is necessary to liberate ourselves from faith in the political system in this country. The culture of equality in American politics is predicated on the expansion of political rights to those who have frequently have not had political representation. But as we have seen so far in our studies, even as America represented an expansion of democratic politics to the many, that expansion takes place without an agreement of what democracy is, or what democratic representation means. I think that the conclusion to draw from Morgan and Bouton is that the expansion of democratic rights is not a political liberation of any kind, but rather a political distraction that occurs, never at great risk, as a means of quelling inherent conflicts that do not fit into easy classification according to liberal political philosophy. This is the intellectual landscape we work from when we analyze class in early America: as long as we maintain allegiance with the American system, our historiography is subject the to the history.

With this in mind, I think that we can move on to Johnson's call for a new mode of social history. Johnson makes one of his most important points when he notes that the current understanding of agency is dependent on the historical conditions in the western world.

[The definition of agency] is saturated with the categories of nineteenth-century liberalism, a set of terms which were themselves worked out in self-conscious philosophical opposition to the condition of slavery. To put this another way: the term "agency" smuggles a notion of the universality of a liberal notion of self hood, with its emphasis on independence and choice, right into the middle of a conversation about slavery against which that supposedly natural condition was originally defined...[ending] up with a more-or-less rational choice model of human being. (115)

This argument is essential because it shows how the category of analysis, in this case agency of the enslaved, is a product of the very historical subject that it is trying to define. Johnson is referring to the fact that western liberalism predicated on a ridged individualism that requires an endorsement of a certain psychological state as "rational" and everything else as irrational or even inhuman. Johnson contends that to a historian operating within the tradition of liberalism, which defines humanity in contrast to slavery, slavery is inhuman phenomenon. Johnson's contention is that while slavery is a terrible part of human history, it is an inseparable part of our humanity. As he shows, the institution of slavery actually "makes use" of humanity through psychological terror and abuse. (116) Johnson's is a crucial insight about the categories of enslaved and free and human and inhuman in early American history.

If we are to apply Johnson's article to our efforts as historians of class, then it is necessary to make an analogous insight about the role that class plays in the liberal model of the individual as a rational actor. In reformulating Johnson's argument of agency among the enslaved to an analysis of class, we arrive at essentially the reverse. According to the American liberal tradition, humanity and equality are defined by the participation in a democratic society and equal participation in the government. Slavery, the ultimate political unfreedom, is on this view the ultimate inhumanity.

But as a critical reading of Gienapp shows, the liberal understanding of humanity as participation in the American democratic system is incompatible with an analysis of class. It is not that class is incompatible with the American political system, but rather that the liberal understanding of American politics does not leave room for class. As long as individuals are guaranteed equal political rights, they fit the liberal definition of the human condition.

More to come as an afterwards....

Framing Essay- March 30th

Susan Beaty
Framing Essay- 3/29/09

This weeks readings featured an essay on agency in historical analysis by Walter Johnson and three pieces that focused on different aspects of the class formation in the Early Republic. While I feel that it is worth discussing the points raised by each of these essays separately, there are a few central themes that I would like to suggest for this week’s seminar.

As Stephen suggests in his framing essay, it might be useful to examine these readings through the lens of Johnson’s conclusions on agency. In this article, Johnson challenges the practice of “giving agency” to oppressed historical subjects, namely slaves, and calls for a new framework for historical analysis. He argues that there is a tendency in New Social History to conflate “humanity, agency, and resistance” by defining slaves as liberal historical subjects with free will, “discovering” the enslaved subject’s struggle to assert their own humanity, and equating acts of humanity with resistance to a system predicated on dehumanization. Johnson explains that this narrative produces narrow definitions of historical subjects and resistance that must be reconsidered; he insists that acts of humanity do not always amount to resistance, and that there are forms of resistance in between and beyond narrow conceptions of “everyday” and “revolutionary” action. Johnson’s central conclusion is that while “giving agency” was once a radical, politicized act of solidarity, it is now an obligatory and self-serving practice. Through, “some knowing laughter and a few ironic asides about the moral idiocy and contradictory philosophy of slaveholders,” historians align themselves with the historical “other,” in order to, “…make ourselves feel better and more righteous rather than to make the world better or more righteous” (121). Johnson says that we must move away from “rhetorical and performative gestures,” which have, “very few costs and, for white scholars are least, more than a few benefits,” (120) and begin to formulate new frameworks for addressing present oppressions based in the past.

While I agree that Johnson provides an incredibly useful critique of current historiographical practices, I find it difficult to imagine the kind of historical writing that Johnson is calling for. For example, in this weeks’ readings, Osborn, Bushman, and Sellers (via Gienapp) examine the hegemonic power of the middling and upper classes in the 19th century through their discussions of medical discourses on alcoholism, the cultural mechanisms of gentility, and the expansion of capitalism in the antebellum U.S. Each author makes the same safe criticisms of the discriminatory (classist, racist, sexist) ideologies of the dominant groups that Johnson alludes to in his piece at no personal risk. Osborn shows us how the medical establishment upheld class norms through differentiated diagnoses of alcohol abuse, thus creating, “… a distinction between the hopeless depravity of impoverished drunkards and the troubling failure of middle class inebriates.” Bushman discusses the ways in which the middle and upper classes justified the creation of a U.S. aristocracy by constructing a mythical egalitarian gentility that attempted to reconcile genteel culture with republicanism, capitalism, and traditional middle class values. Sellers paints Jacksonian America as a time of class conflict between an oppressive capitalist class and a oppressed, pre-capitalist lower class, wherein the former forced an economic shift towards free market capitalism on the former. He demonizes the business classes that used the legal and political systems to shape U.S. capitalism, and, “attributes no redeeming qualities to middle-class Americans” that valued social mobility. Thus, each of these authors acknowledges the collective, historical “agency” of the ruling classes and in doing so and condemns their use of hegemonic power. What do we make of this? In what ways do each of these authors align themselves with historically disadvantaged groups, and how does the agency of lower class subjects inform their arguments? Are these authors making the same “rhetorical gestures” that Johnson discussed in his essay, or are their criticisms of oppressive groups constructive? Are all of these arguments safe and depoliticized or are these authors taking risk or being innovative in their conclusions? What would Johnson have to say about these three narratives, and how might he change them to be more productive?

Another discussion topic that I would like to explore is the conflict between elitism and egalitarianism during this period. Both Osborn and Bushman explore the need for the middle and upper classes to reconcile their choices, lifestyle, and at times their very existence, with the revolutionary myths of republicanism and equality. In Osborn’s essay he discusses how the advent of alcohol abuse in the 1810s forced Philadelphia’s medical establishment to explain alcoholism in terms of contemporary social and economic structures. Doctors asserted that there was a difference between the “intemperance” of the poor, based in their moral degradation and inferiority, and the medical disorders of the middle and upper classes that could be diagnosed and treated. By creating two, classed versions of alcohol abuse the medical complex accounted for poverty and economic failure while reinforced the power of the middle and upper classes, thus perpetuating the myth of equal opportunity. Similarly, in Bushman’s discussion of gentility in the 19th century, he explains how the emerging aristocracy struggled to reconcile an imported, European genteel culture with U.S. values. He argues that the expression of gentility was a means of creating class authority and asserting class identity and difference, and that the U.S. elite turned to emulation of European gentility because it was the only tool they had at their disposal. This created problems, as gentility stood at odds with radical republicanism and middle class values of industry and hard work, but the aristocracy solved this by constructing a myth of accessible gentility. As Bushman points out, gentility was originally a cultural revolution in that it made it possible to purchase power rather than just inherit it. The elite classes of the early republic built on this narrative and insisted on an accessible, democratic gentility, welcoming everyone into society, “but only on elite terms.” By examining the case of the black elite, who “bought into the culture of refinement” but were ultimately excluded from the refined gentry, Bushman proves that the aim of the elite was, “to separate themselves from the lower classes, not to assimilate them.” (439) Thus, both authors show how the ruling classes struggled to explain the hypocrisy inherent to the American social order. What other examples of this have we seen this semester? Drawing on Morgan and Bouton, what are the historical roots of this contradiction? Where can we see the legacy of this hypocrisy in contemporary U.S. culture?

Framing: Contours of Class in the Early Republic

As the term ‘agency’ has tended to crop up in our seminar discussions and writings, I find it appropriate that one of our readings (“On Agency” by Walter Johnson) should focus so explicitly on the term’s implications. In this 2003 article, Johnson confronts the tendency of scholars to suggest that “stolen ‘agency’” is “addressed through the writing of history which returns that ‘agency’ to its rightful owners” (Johnson, 119) and argues that “we are practicing therapy rather than politics: we are using our work to make ourselves feel better and more righteous rather than to make the world better or more righteous” (Johnson, 121). Rather than confronting injustices in the present, some of which are invariably rooted in the legacy of African slavery and the slave trade, for example, scholars have chosen to congratulate themselves on how far they have come. Although the complementary readings (Osborn, Bushman, and Gienapp) are not as deliberately self-reflective as is Johnson’s work, I wonder if it is possible to engage them on Johnson’s terms.

These are works principally concerned with adding nuance and clarity to the tensions and contradictions of class formation in the Early Republic, rather than restoring ‘agency’ to marginalized populations. Although there is obviously much more at stake in these works, one of their most striking characteristics is the degree to which the ‘agency’ of contrary classes informs the behavior of the primary groups: thus, just as Richard Bushman suggests that, “The attacks on the black elite provide a clear example of middle-class sensitivity to invasions from below . . . . Of all black people, aspiring blacks were the most threatening” (Bushman, 438 – 439), so too Matthew Osborn argues that, “In American cities, prevalent attitudes toward poverty shaped perceptions of the disease” of cholera (Osborn, 116). Class formation—particularly middle-class formation—is shaped for these scholars, as much by aspirations from above as by fears from below. Thus, diagnoses of “delirium tremens,” in Osborn’s work, was associated “with middle-class economic failure and social downfall” (Osborn, 119), and Bushman’s dreams of refinement are dependent on, “Fixing responsibility for the condition of the poor” on the their lack of gentility (Bushman, 424). In these works, the middle class consumes and is diagnosed within the context of lower class, which these works tend to reference with precisely the same tone Johnson finds in scholarship of chattel slavery. While the poor and marginalized may not be the primary subject of study in their works, both Bushman and Osborn display sensibilities toward the pretensions of the middle class vis-à-vis the lower sorts that Johnson cites in the racism of slaveholders: “As such it has a similar function to the knowing laughter you hear at conference panels when someone reads out the remarks of the racist other” (Johnson, 120). It is not simply that the middle class can be analyzed based on material culture and medical terminology, but that these scholars discuss the “patronizing attitude” of the middle class (Bushman, 425) and physicians’ tendency, by the mid-nineteenth century, to separate “respectable inebriates . . . rather than expose them to the violent behavior of delirium tremens patients” (Osborn, 132) with the same “advertisement of good will” Johnson is criticizing (Johnson, 120).

Even more overt is William Gienapp’s article, which is ostensibly intended as a corrective to the legacy of Charles Sellers, Jr.’s scholarship. Gienapp levels a sharp critique, charging that “radical historians have increasingly fallen back on the argument that the American party system deliberately stymies the popular will,” meaning “party leaders . . . divert[ed] the masses from their true concerns” (Gienapp, 253 – 254). This tendency, Gienapp argues, has led Sellers to write history for the present—in Sellers’s case, for the 1960s—rather than for the past. In fact, Gienapp begins with a discussion of the 1960s as an explanatory preface for the historiographical context of Sellers’s work, before challenging it as a “throwback to the progressive school” of Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. (Gienapp, 234). The problem, for Gienapp, is not simply that Sellers, distracted by present-ist concerns, has strained to find ahistorical class divisions, but that Sellers appears to be patently un-self-reflective of this tendency. One wonders what Walter Johnson would make of this challenge—allowing for a number of areas in which Gienapp does legitimately undermine Sellers’s conclusions; as in the case of the 1828 election, for example—to Sellers’s understanding of the ‘market revolution.’ It is not difficult to imagine, for example, the conferences of the early 1990s in which a suggestion that, “Americans, particularly the rural majority, eagerly embraced the market” would be met cordially (Gienapp, 248). Gienapp freely adopts the same knowing tone—“Embracing the permissiveness of the sixties, Sellers attributes no redeeming qualities to middle-class Americans” (Gienapp, 249)—as does Johnson’s imagined scholar. Ultimately, however, the point is not simply that Gienapp, like Sellers, Osborn, Bushman—and Johnson, for that matter—find ‘agency’ or fault based on present-ist conditions, but that, as Johnson suggests, there is little to nothing at stake when they do so.